The Metaphysics of Henry More [electronic resource] /
Reid, Jasper.author.
From his correspondence with Descartes in the 1640s to his discussions with Isaac Newton in the 1680s, Henry More (1614–1687) was a central figure in seventeenth-century philosophy. Notwithstanding his occasional portrayal as a rather eccentric anachronism, excessively wedded to the Neoplatonism of the past, the fact is that he was involved in some of the most cutting-edge debates of the day, and engaged with most of the giants of that great age of geniuses. The present work takes More seriously as a subtle and systematic early-modern metaphysician. It explores his ideas in relation to those of his contemporaries, both friends and foes, while also taking care not to neglect his Neoplatonic heritage; but it also reveals just how original a thinker he was in his own right. Topics include More’s evolving conception of Hyle (or first matter); his account of the physical world, a world of atoms without void; his theory of immaterial extension, and the divine real space that underlay this world; his attitude to mechanical explanations in physics, and his preferred theory of the Spirit of Nature; his developing attitude to the notion of living matter; and his views on the life of the human soul, before as well as after its union with the human body.
Contents: 1. Introduction -- 1.1. The Place of Henry More in Seventeenth-Century Thought -- 1.2. More’s Goals, Targets and Influences -- 1.3. Epistemology and Rhetoric -- 2. Atoms and Void -- 2.1. Background -- 2.2. Henry More on Atoms -- 2.3. The Void -- 2.4. The Extension of the Universe, and Extramundane Void -- 2.5. Impenetrability -- 2.6. Atomic Shape. 3. Hyle, Atoms and Space -- 3.1. Background -- 3.2. Hyle, Atoms and Space in More’s Philosophical Poems -- 3.3. More’s Equivocation on the Nature of Hyle, 1653–1662 -- 3.4. More’s Mature Conception of Hyle -- 4. Real Space -- 4.1. Background -- 4.2. The Immobility of the Parts of Space I: More’s Cylinder -- 4.3. The Immobility of the Parts of Space II: The Reciprocity of Motion -- 4.4. What Space Could Not Be -- 4.5. The Reception of More’s Theories of Space -- 5. Spiritual Presence -- 5.1. Background: Holenmerianism and Nullibism -- 5.2. More’s Refutation of Nullibism -- 5.3. More and Holenmerianism -- 5.4. Time and Eternity -- 6. Spiritual Extension -- 6.1. Introduction -- 6.2. Indiscerpibility -- 6.3. Penetrability -- 6.4. Self-penetration, Essential Spissitude, and Hylopathia -- 6.5. Divine Real Space -- 6.6. Divine Space before and after Henry More -- 7. Living Matter -- 7.1. Life and Soul -- 7.2. Gradual Monism in More’s Philosophical Poems -- 7.3. Life and Causation in the More-Descartes Correspondence -- 7.4. More’s Subsequent Reversal: the Case of Francis Glisson -- 7.5. Anne Conway and Francis Mercury van Helmont -- 7.6. The Eagle-Boy-Bee -- 7.7. More–Conway–van Helmont–Leibniz -- 8. Mechanism and its Limits -- 8.1. Introduction -- 8.2. Mechanism in More’s Early Works -- 8.3. The Limits of Mechanism: Some Case Studies -- 8.4. ‘Mixed Mechanics’ -- 8.5. The Fate of the Mechanical Philosophy: Boyle, Newton and beyond -- 9. The Spirit of Nature -- 9.1. Background -- 9.2. Psyche, Physis, the Mundane Spright, and the Spirit of the World -- 9.3. The Spirit of Nature, and Particular Spirits -- 9.4. Occasionalism and Bungles -- 9.5. The Fate of the Spirit of Nature -- 10. The Life of the Soul -- 10.1. The Pre-Existence of the Soul -- 10.2. The Immortality of the Soul, and Aerial and Aethereal Vehicles -- 10.3. The Animal and Divine Lives -- 10.4. The Fall and Rise of the Soul -- Editions Cited.
From his correspondence with Descartes in the 1640s to his discussions with Isaac Newton in the 1680s, Henry More (1614–1687) was a central figure in seventeenth-century philosophy. Notwithstanding his occasional portrayal as a rather eccentric anachronism, excessively wedded to the Neoplatonism of the past, the fact is that he was involved in some of the most cutting-edge debates of the day, and engaged with most of the giants of that great age of geniuses. The present work takes More seriously as a subtle and systematic early-modern metaphysician. It explores his ideas in relation to those of his contemporaries, both friends and foes, while also taking care not to neglect his Neoplatonic heritage; but it also reveals just how original a thinker he was in his own right. Topics include More’s evolving conception of Hyle (or first matter); his account of the physical world, a world of atoms without void; his theory of immaterial extension, and the divine real space that underlay this world; his attitude to mechanical explanations in physics, and his preferred theory of the Spirit of Nature; his developing attitude to the notion of living matter; and his views on the life of the human soul, before as well as after its union with the human body.
More, Henry, 1614-1687.
Philosophy.
History.
Religion.